Tarot

A Tarot deck consists of 78 cards: 22 trumps, or major arcana, and
56 suit cards, or minor arcana. The former represent archetypes
encountered on the journey of life; the latter are analagous to our
modern-day deck of cards, with an additional court (face) card. The
Tarot is believed to have originated in mid-fifteenth-century Italy
and was probably used to play a trick-taking game similar to bridge.
Later, the cards became associated with the esoteric arts. Occultists
such as Arthur Edward Waite developed their own decks with additional
symbolism and correspondences (e.g. the 22 letters of the Hebrew
alphabet). The Rider-Waite Tarot, with artwork by Pamela Colman
Smith, is probably the most well-known and widely-used Tarot deck of
the twentieth century.